How to Make Arrows in Minecraft

Minecraft is good at providing players with all sorts of different weapon options. You can fight both using melee and a ranged weapon. However, ranged weapons are completely useless without ammo, which is arrows in the case of both bows and crossbows. Arrows are easily craftable and allow you to use ranged weapons to their fullest potential. To help you with it, in this guide, we will be explaining how you can make all types of arrows in Minecraft.

Table of Contents

Items You Need to Make Arrows in Minecraft

Since there are three arrow variants in the game, we’ve included the required resources for each of them separately here.

Regular Arrows

Regular arrows don’t have any special effects but deal raw damage. To make a regular arrow, you’ll need the following materials:

• 1 Stick
• 1 Feather
• 1 Flint
• Crafting Table

You can get sticks from decaying leaves or craft them by placing two wooden planks side by side vertically in the crafting grid. Feather is a common drop from the chicken Minecraft mob. Flint is dropped when you break gravel without silk touch Minecraft enchantment.

Crafting table is a utility block that provides you with a 3×3 crafting grid. Feel free to check out our guide on how to make a crafting table, so you can easily obtain this block.

Spectral Arrows

Spectral arrows, besides dealing raw damage, create a bright outline around the mob or player you hit. Moreover, they only exist in the Java edition of the game. In order to make one of these arrows, you’ll need:

• 1 Regular Arrow
• 4 Glowstone Dust
• Crafting Table

Glowstone dust is an item that you can get while mining glowstone blocks in the Nether dimension without silk touch enchantment. Alternatively, you can get it by killing witches in the Overworld.

Tipped Arrows

Tipped arrows are a special arrow variant that deals raw damage and inflicts a certain status effect on the target. Their recipe requires the following ingredients:

• 8 Regular Arrows
• 1 Lingering Potion (any)
• Crafting Table

Lingering potions are a special variant of Minecraft potions that require the dragon’s breath item to be crafted.

How to Craft Regular Arrows in Minecraft

After you gather the needed resources for a particular arrow type, follow the process below to craft it. All the crafting recipes require a 3 x 3 crafting grid block, so the steps for placing and using them will be mentioned only in the section related to the regular arrows.

• Place the crafting table in your world and right-click the block to open its UI.
• Start the recipe by placing one feather in any slot of the bottommost row.

• Then, place the stick right above the feather.
• Finally, put the flint item in the slot above the stick.
• You will see that 4 arrows appear in the result slot on the right.

Now, hover over the arrows and click to craft and move them to your inventory. You can also use the new crafter in Minecraft 1.21 to automate the crafting process of arrows, but it can get a bit complex to do.

How to Craft Spectral Arrows in Minecraft

• After you open the crafting UI, place the regular arrow in the central slot of the grid.
• Then, add glowstone dust in the shape of a diamond around the arrow, with one being above, one being below and two to the left and right of the arrow.

After you complete the recipe, two spectral arrows will appear in the result slot on the right.

How to Make Tipped Arrows in Minecraft

Again, you need regular arrows to make tipped arrows with certain effects on them. Here’s how:

• First, place the lingering potion of your choice in the central slot of the grid.
• Then, fill the rest of the empty spaces completely with regular arrows in each slot.
• This recipe always yields 8 tipped arrows of the matching status effect.

How to Make Tipped Arrows on Bedrock Edition

If you use a regular arrow on a cauldron with a potion inside, the arrow will turn into a tipped arrow on Minecraft Bedrock. If you use a stack with a single arrow on a cauldron, that arrow will consume one-fourth of the potion inside.

However, this is not at all efficient as you can use a stack of 16 arrows on a cauldron and that same action will consume one-fourth of the potion. So, if you use a full stack of 64 arrows on a cauldron filled with a potion, all 64 arrows will turn into the tipped version.

Other Ways to Get Arrows in Minecraft

Apart from crafting, you can get arrows in several other ways. They include the following:

• Skeletons and strays drop 0-2 arrows when they are slayed. If you have looting enchantment on your sword, you can get up to 5 arrows per kill. Strays also have a 50% chance of dropping an arrow of slowness, which becomes higher with looting.
• On the Bedrock edition, pillagers also drop arrows similar to skeletons.
• You can buy regular and tipped arrows from fletcher villagers.
• Bartering with piglins can occasionally get you spectral arrows in the Java edition or regular arrows in the Bedrock edition.
• If the player has the “hero of the village” status effect in the Java edition, fletcher villagers can throw regular and tipped arrows at them as a reward.
• Regular arrows are generated in chests of the following structures – bastion remnants, jungle temples, pillager outposts, and villages.
• Spectral arrows are also generated in the chests of the bastion remnants in the Java edition.

After obtaining arrows in whichever way suits you most, you can start using them. On their own, the arrows behave as a regular item, but if you also make a crossbow or a bow, you can use the weapons to shoot arrows at mobs and players.

All you need to do is to have at least one arrow in your inventory and hold the use button (right-click on PC) while the ranged weapon is selected. You’ll start drawing the weapon and once you let go of the button, you’ll shoot the arrow.

You can change the arrow damage and its effects by applying some of the best bow enchantments to your bow. Arrows even have the ability to trigger some redstone component blocks, such as wooden buttons, wooden pressure plates, tripwires, and a target block.

With that said, now you know how arrows can be crafted in Minecraft! Do you like crafting them or prefer buying them from villagers? Furthermore, which arrow variant is your favorite? Tell us in the comments below!